Chapter Thirty-seven
It wasn’t even close. Bark’s nag, Sherman, sailed in half a length ahead of Booth, with the kid riding it flapping around like he couldn’t hang on. Booth, ridden by that Swede in purple silks, seemed half awake, even though the Swede was popping his butt with the crop. The judges hardly needed to debate it. The match race man, Limp, was out the stake. Now we’d see if he paid up.
The jockeys slowed their mounts, turned them, and trotted them back to the finish line. Bark’s horse looked like it had barely worked up a sweat, while the matchmaker’s nag was lathered through the flanks.
“Well,” said Limp, “you’ve some fine, fine horseflesh here, Bark, and my fine little gelding’s been properly whomped.” He pulled out his little black bag, slowly extracted a mess of twenties, and paid them out, one at a time, to Bark, who watched the bills collect in his horny hand. Bark allowed himself a little smile.
The bookie, Boston Bill, was paying off some wagers, too, less cheerfully but, even so, it got done. Lot of fellers from Puma County walked off with a few more greenbacks in their britches than they started with, and the day was uncommonly cheerful for them. A good Hanging Day and winning a bet on some nags, that made a memorable day if one was in from the ranches, where life was dull and no one could think of anything to do except target practice and practical jokes.
There were a mess of people around the nags, eyeing them, gaining knowledge, turning themselves into racing experts, and priming themselves for the next match race, scheduled at four that afternoon after another hanging. I sure knew the feeling. I could see how Bark’s horse was better built, had more chest and lung, than Limp’s horse, and I could see how Bark had trained it up real fine, so that it could run a short race better than anyone else’s nag, at least in Puma County. Maybe it’d not be so fine down in Laramie, where there were fancy horsemen calculating how to win races.
People sure were having a fine day. Bark collected his friends and headed for the Last Chance Saloon to have a lick at the bar before going to the next hanging. The matchmaker and the judges were laying out a half-mile racetrack, this time a big oval with the four corners marked, so people wouldn’t have to walk far out of town to see the finish. I didn’t know who was running against Limp and his Robert E. Lee, which was one sleek bay that looked like it could whip anything in three states.
It got along toward the hanging time, and all the town collected at the gallows. Rusty had chased off the brats who were playing hangman, and he was operating the trapdoor so it dropped proper. Old Whiskers himself, Hanging Judge Earwig, was impatiently waiting to condemn anyone who showed up. The crowd slowly gathered. I saw the Ukrainian twins, rosy and fresh from their honeymoon, watching the proceedings along with Riley, who was bug-eyed at the thought of hanging anyone, and kept feeling his neck to see if it was still there. Belle was there, too, itching to see some criminal croak.
It had gotten pretty hot, and the businessmen had doffed their suit coats, and the cowboys had big black stains under their armpits. If it wasn’t for Hanging Day, most everyone would be having a siesta. My ma used to say that a nap in the middle of the day made the evenings better, but I never saw it. Evenings were one and the same, usually cooler and welcome in the summer.
Earwig pulled out his giant timepiece, decided the moment had come, and climbed up onto the gallows with a megaphone.
“All right, step right up, see justice done. We’ll hang the next batch. When I call your name, step forward and take your medicine, or forever be branded as a craven coward.” He eyed the growing crowd. “It’s five minutes ahead of the hour, but I’ve elected to get on with it. What’s five minutes to the condemned? A blink of the eye. All, right, all right. Here are the deceased:
“Randy Packer, Mulligan Meyers, Dinty Stepovich, Walker Wayne, Joe Popper, and Big Nose George.”
There were little gasps of pleasure as the crowd took the measure of the condemned. Most of them were Flying D men, but a couple were Admiral Ranch men, including Big Nose.
“Packer, step forward,” the judge called, but there was no Packer anywhere around.
“Meyers, take your medicine,” he bawled, but no Meyers threaded through the crowd.
“Stepovich, step up!” But that didn’t yield a hangee.
“Wayne, you lily-livered coward, step into the noose.” But the lily-livered didn’t.
“Popper, you come up here and face the music.” Earwig peered around, seeing no cowhand of that description.
“And you, Big Nose, you come forward and pay for your crimes.”
Big Nose George moved slowly through the crowd, headed for the gallows, while the crowd watched, electrified. He seemed somehow alone, separated from the hundreds of people surrounding him.
It suddenly occurred to me that Big Nose was going to be hanged, and I was going to do the hanging.
Big Nose, formidable and heavy, walked slowly to the front of the gallows.
“All right, hang me,” he said. “Hang me for a little brawling in a saloon. That’s a hanging offense.”
Hanging Judge Earwig seemed to expand. His wattles ballooned. His bosom grew. His ears reddened. “Hanged by the neck until dead,” he snarled.
The crowd of merrymakers suddenly turned silent. The game was over. Big Nose was calling Earwig’s bluff. Earwig could not call Big Nose a coward or a craven criminal, not now, not ever again.
“Go ahead, hang me, you little fart,” Big Nose said softly.
The crowd stirred. This was new and unexpected. This might ruin Hanging Day. This might turn Hanging Judge Earwig into a monster. It had all been fun, fun to call all the condemned cowards for not showing up for their appointment with the noose. But now the fun stopped cold.
I saw a few of those mothers suddenly send their daughters home, and I watched the girls retreat, scared, in their bright summer whites, into the crowd, and off the square.
Judge Earwig began to redden. He bloated up like a bullfrog, staring at Big Nose, licking his lips, pinking up until I thought he’d burst a blood vessel.
“Hang him, hang him right now,” Earwig said.
Big Nose, he calmly stepped onto the trap and fitted a noose over his neck, and even drew it up, and twisted the knot so it would snap his neck. He held out his hands to me to tie behind his back. I stared at him. He was calling the game, and he held the aces and twos.
The mob down there, they turned so silent that the breeze seemed noisy. I watched George Waller, the mayor, looking rapt and discomfited. And Reggie Thimble, swallowing hard. And Delphinium Sanders, the banker’s wife who approved of hanging everyone, on principle, looking mighty solemn.
And I was looking into my own heart, knowing the act of killing a man would be mine alone, and that there was no justice in it, and that Big Nose didn’t even deserve an hour in my jail, much less a grave in the little cemetery just outside the city limits.
“Do it,” Earwig said, jamming his finger at me.
“Tell me the law,” I said. Let him show me book and verse that said that the Territory of Wyoming had the lawful right to hang a man for getting into a saloon fight.
“You’ll be next if you don’t get busy,” Earwig said, all bloated up and glaring at me, the instrument of the will of the court.
That mob down there, it sure was quiet. All the ladies at the sandwich stand, they were crying. Time had stopped. That’s the only way I could put it. The clocks all quit.
“Hang him,” yelled Cronk, the faro dealer.
“Hang him,” yelled Manilla Twining, the grand dame of Doubtful.
Lawyer Stokes stepped forward. “You must do as the court directs, young man. Do it promptly, as required.”
But Denver Sally had a different view. “Cotton, don’t be a jerk,” she said.
Big Nose, he was staring at me, his eyes mocking. He was the winner, in a way. No one would ever call him a coward.
I scratched my ear, which is what I do when my brain quits on me. Riley was watching me; so were the Siamese twins. Rusty was quietly waiting. The judge’s glare was so fierce it bored right through me. He stood there, a rock of wrath, waiting to hang me, too if I didn’t comply.
I knew pretty much what I had to do, and wondered what it might mean for me. I had to do what was right. And damn the consequences. There were a lot of people down there, their gazes riveted on me, and on my old friend Big Nose George, and even as they watched me, I made up my mind.
I unpinned the brass badge I wore on my shirt. It came loose easily, slid out of the gray fabric of my shirt, and into my hand.
I dropped the badge into Earwig’s hand. He seemed to bloat up, and then he started laughing. I couldn’t believe it. There he was, laughing like some old geezer who’d just told a knee-slapper.
I am not bright, everyone likes to tell me, and I was even less bright trying to figure this one out. There he was, wheezing away, and pretty soon the crowd, they were hooting and cackling, and there was Big Nose, still solemn, but he had won, and no bullying judge would ever call a cowboy a coward or a craven criminal again. Me, I didn’t mind the laughter. Let them call me a coward, or slow, or whatever they wanted. I’d done what I thought was the right thing.
Big Nose, he came up to me, and threw an arm around my shoulder, and smiled.
“Here’s a man,” he said. “A real man.”
I confess, I didn’t know the difference between a man and any other male, but if he wanted to jabber at me, that was fine.
Earwig, he slapped the badge into my hand, and laughed, and wandered away, leaving an odd hole in the crowd, because no one wanted to come close to him.
I didn’t know whether to pin the badge back on, and decided that if I’d resigned, maybe the supervisors needed to appoint me. But then the blamedest thing happened. Reggie Thimble himself, he made his way through the throng, took that brass star out of my hand, and poked the needle part of it through my gray shirt, stabbing me only twice before he got it hooked in proper. So I was sheriff again, but I couldn’t figure why. A feller always has to do what’s right, and that was clear. I never did argue in my head about whether the hanging was right; it wasn’t. Not for that. All I worried about was whether I’d lose the job. I don’t mind being sheriff, but there are times I’d just as soon climb onto Critter and go work cattle somewhere as far from people as I could get. California or some awful place like that.
But no one was coming up to me. I had a little space around me, same as Judge Earwig, and I felt real alone in the midst of all those people who were staring at me like I was a two-headed calf.
Hanging Day was rescued, seems like. Pretty soon the ladies were peddling sarsaparilla and fried chicken, and the brats were up on the gallows, playing hangman again.
“Rusty, cut them nooses off,” I said, pointing to a dozen little devils who were running the nooses around necks.
He hollered at the brats, and pretty quick he sawed through all that rope, and then pulled the handle of the trap, which fell down on its hinge. I’d get the county workmen to take the thing down and store it once again. Maybe someday I’d need it for a real hanging of a real bad man. But not this August day.